Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 46:1 (NA 1995)
Article: Rhetoric, Scholarship And Galatians: Assessing An Approach To Paul's Epistle
Author: Philip H. Kern

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TynBul 46:1 (1995) p. 201

Rhetoric, Scholarship And Galatians: Assessing An Approach To Paul's Epistle

Philip H. Kern1

This thesis argues that Galatians was not written in conformity with Graeco-Roman rhetoric. Chapter 1 defines the terms relevant to the discussion, proposing that various meanings of 'rhetoric' itself are sometimes blurred and then misapplied. The argument that all discourse is rhetorical, and that Greeks and Romans best described rhetoric, so therefore their handbooks ought to be employed to describe all discourse, is fraught with difficulties which can only be eliminated by a precise understanding of the particular view of rhetoric controlling a given analysis. Importantly, classical rhetoric must be seen as a subset of universal rhetoric, not as synonymous.

These definitions, which range from rhetoric as the universal phenomenon of persuasive communication to rhetoric as classical oratory, are treated in chapter 2 with respect to the various scholars who have discussed Galatians. Presuppositions are set forth in order to determine whether the analysts propose to read Galatians as a piece of classical oratory or to view it as a discourse to be apprehended by applying broader indices. It is thus seen that so-called precursors to a rhetorical analysis of Galatians—scholars such as James Muilenburg and Amos Wilder—often had little interest in classical matters, instead concentrating on how the text achieves its purpose. Asking how communication works may even be thought of as the true hallmark of rhetorical investigations, not conformity to classical descriptions.

TynBul 46:1 (1995) p. 202

Since H.D. Betz has presented the most thorough discussion of the epistle's dispositio, i.e. its rhetorical structure, detailed interaction with his commentary and its citations of classical sources provides the backbone to the work as a whole. This, the purpose of chapter 3, depends on the handbooks more than extant speeches, firstly, because the former are the sources upon which Betz himself relies, and secondly, because speeches are often not the offspring of stereotypical ways of understanding oratory. In the end it appears that the actual structure of Galatians does not conform to the handbooks in anything more than a superficial way. Indeed, one should expect some degree of similarity since oratory and Paul's epistles overlap somewhat in function, i.e. both seek to persuade the audience to adopt a certain point of view. Such a purpose need not, however, depend on the canons of classical rhetoric for fulfilment.

Chapter 4 turns from the epistle's structure to the question of species. When 'forensic' 'deliberative', and 'epideictic' are understo...

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